Hostages, Indecision, Guilt, Shame, Regret & the Courage to Adapt
The Chronicles of Brian Castellani
There will always be misanthropic types of people who take pleasure in dragging you down.
There are people who, despite their better judgment, will specifically choose to cause hardship rather than help. People who specifically make the choice to not understand your reasons, or won’t get involved in a particular situation. These people are consciously making a decision to cause unnecessary strife out of their own deficient appetites.
It’s their prerogative. It may not be who they are – but… it is where they are.
It’s their choice. They made that choice with the full knowledge of what their desired outcome would be for that interaction.
For that moment in time, it is the choice they chose to make, and… they made the choice.
But conversely, it is explicitly your choice to continue engaging with them once you realized what is involved and that they made that distinct decision.
Does it serve you to hang on to petty resentments? Realize that in this life we have to live, we only get one shot. Maybe two, if we are lucky – but that isn’t up to us either. And that’s not what this is about.
The people who hold us back may never know what it feels like to live a happy and fulfilled life, because most people get stuck. They have decided to attach themselves to something that they think is more important than their own life… Hear them. Listen to them. We need to just accept what they tell us.
People will find themselves there one day. They didn’t plan for it, it just happened. They become another stuck human – just like you – and it is one of the cycles that therapists talk about.
But… it almost never stops “there.” There is always more to the story, more that we don’t see. More reasons that might justify the reason “why” but – does it matter?
People suddenly find themselves inside this cycle, and they are over remorseful, too apologetic, and always regret their past decisions, yet they continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
Indecision, shame, and regret can be the catalyst to change, if you want it but you have to want to change.
We are raised to assign meaning to inanimate realities, to be blind consumers who plod along with a yearly marketing plan and force-fed a false destiny of “acceptance” in relation to leading our own lives.
What is it about other people’s agenda’s that force us to feel deficient? What amount of products do we have to purchase to feel fulfilled in our own lives? How will we feel like a whole person, if it doesn’t matter what you buy?
There has never been a cure-all for humanity. There will never be a life-altering drug that will change your life completely.
The only thing that is completely “life-altering,” is the specific choice to change. It is a momentary choice a person makes, which at some random time in a person’s life, might inevitably last a lifetime.
It will come in the form of an overdose, or the running a traffic light, or taking someone else’s life prematurely, or having 6 people beat you to death, and leave you to deal with the aftermath. Focus on getting over the divorce. Focus on being sober. Focus on getting over your circumstances. Focus on getting over your lifelong pain. Focus on yourself.
Nothing is impossible, nothing is forever, there is One Question: what WILL you choose to do?
Once a person chooses their path, there is only that specific choice to accept the situation for what it is and embrace the outcome. There isn’t another option until you are physically and/or spiritually able to be reborn, again, free – from the thing that you have assigned attachment to.
But freedom is fickle and can be an illusion. People must make an active decision to live and to be present in their own lives, without a focus on the result.
Our only choice is to adapt.
Adapt to living, or else you are fated to spend the majority of the life that’s left, remembering what you’ve lost, what was taken away from you, or who you could have been.
Until you’re physically and/or spiritually able to pull yourself from the things you’re attached to – and consciously make an active decision to live – your life won’t change.
The best most people can hope for in this self-serving life is to hold onto the people you love, remain open for the ones in this world who might take a chance to love us back and to never beg for understanding from people who will never give it.
Go where the fleeting time takes us, we must act decisively and ruthlessly be able to make our decision to live a life worth living, or there is no point to any of it.
There are no golden tickets, there are only the illusions of living a charmed life. The true measure of a person is their tolerance of other peoples issues. Sometimes, though, we all have to go through an illusion in order to understand how to even tolerate ourselves.
The message we need to hear is very clear… no matter what happens, you must survive in your own life – as long as you can, as authentically as you can, if that is actually possible.
To the person who thinks this is about them, you are wrong. It isn’t about you. The truth is, sure, I was a little sad at first, then I felt really lucky that I escaped a person who I would have done anything for, but you wouldn’t have ever appreciated it.